The Real Skinny

• Share

(2 of 2)

The reason we want models to gain weight, let's face it, is not mostly to protect them. It's to protect other, less genetically freakish girls--our daughters or, ahem, us--from having poor self-esteem or becoming anorexic. But people don't get anorexia from looking at fashion magazines (although it doesn't help). Anorexia is as much about a girl feeling that her life is not in her control as it is about body image. So dictating to models what their body type should be, whether to make it bigger or smaller, seems to send the wrong message.

A more useful place to start assigning blame might be the designers. (You thought I was going to blame the magazines?) Designers, let's face it, design for the thin. The skinny pants, low-cut jeans, micro-minis and bubble skirts that are coming our way this fall all look fabulous if you're built like a darning needle, but they're just not going to work on us pincushions. Is there really no middle ground between micro-shorts and muumuus? We can build a camera that makes you look slimmer in photographs, but we can't design a flattering outfit for a 145-lb. woman?

Of course, the dirty little secret here is that not all models have to be thin. It's one of the cruelest axioms of fashion that once you get big, you can get big. If Tyra Banks shows up for a shoot with a little extra poundage, they just touch her up later. Kate Moss could, if she wished, balloon all the way up to 100 lbs., and she'd still get work. But little Nadya Abouttofallova eats one pork rind, and she's on the first plane back to Uzbekistan. It's hard to feel sympathy for people who make their living from being freakily beautiful, but come on, folks, leave the models alone. Let's at least pick on someone our own size.